Perhaps the most important basketball things to know about Lexi Bishop, senior shooting guard for the Viking women's hoops team, are that she's tough and she's aggressive (and just talking with this friendly, open young woman, you might not see that).

Her toughness shows from the battle she's had with painful injuries from the time she was a freshman. As a freshman, she tore her ACL, MCL and meniscus (never mind, they all have to do with knees and they're very painful) in the Big Sky Conference tournament against Northern Colorado.

Bishop had played in 30 games and made 22 starts and led the Vikings in 3-point field goal percentage that year.

Last year, she developed plantar fasciitis – a tear in a ligament which runs along the bottom of the foot causing severe heel pain – which she battled throughout the season.

“In one stretch (last year), we had three games back-to-back-to-back and we really needed her. In the second game, she had tears running down her cheek she was in so much pain. I said 'Lexi, are you up to it?'And she said yes and played in pain,” said Vikings Head Coach Sherri Murrell.

As to the aggressiveness, ask Murrell what Bishop brings to the table and she answers without hesitation: “Defense. Her freshman year, I coined the description for her 'Our Little Bulldog.' I even got a photo of a bulldog, pasted her face on it and put in on her locker.”

Bishop recalled that with a laugh.

“Lexi is very aggressive. We always put her on the other team's best guard,” said Murrell. Sometimes, Bishop is a little undersized but “when she goes against someone who is a little taller, it's the bite and the dog. She makes up for the height,” said Murrell.

For her part, the 21-year-old Bishop attributes her aggressiveness to the training she got growing with two sports-minded older brothers (Derek, 29, and Spencer, 26). In fact, her whole family is sports minded. Here dad, Craig, played basketball, baseball and football and mom Cindy plays golf and tennis.

She credited her aggressiveness to her elder brothers.

“Because of them, I was kind of a girly tom boy. You had to be aggressive to protect yourself. Spencer brought the competitiveness out in me. He'd say 'come on, let's play one on one or let's go shoot some hoops'. I'm really glad I had brothers,” she said.

Her starts have increased throughout her college career and last year she started 32 games, missing only the Boise State contest early in the season due to illness. Even with the pain, she was fourth on the team in minutes per game (22.9) and in three pointers made (30).

The upcoming season will be the culmination of a basketball career that started when she was four years old. Throughout grade school she tried just about every sport available: soccer, volleyball and track, in addition to basketball.

By the time she got to high school, the 5-foot-8 Bishop had narrowed her sports to volleyball, basketball and track and was a grand success in all three.

She was three-time team MVP, a McDonald's All-American nominee, earned all-State honors and graduated as Shadle Park's all-time leading scorer. She was team MVP and team captain in volleyball and member of a 4X400-meter relay team that finished fourth at the state meet and was a track MVP as a sophomore.

Towards the end of her high school career, she began to focus more on basketball because she liked the girls on the team and because she liked the team dynamics of basketball better than volleyball, and as a team sport person, track was too individual for her.

She made the varsity basketball team as a freshman, which helped her realize that “I also was just a stronger basketball player.”

Although Murrell saw her strength as a defender early, Bishop's confidence in her abilities there came later in her playing career.

“In high school, I wasn't a good defensive player. But I had good grounding in that part of the game. I loved to shoot," she recalled. Although she still likes to shoot, and her stats prove that she's good at it, “sometime during my junior year I decided that I found defense easier than a lot of people think. If you work hard, it's fun. It's fun to stop an opponent.”

She found the college game a lot faster than high school. “College is so much faster. You've got to be stronger, faster and smarter. You have to think ahead more, be one step ahead of everyone else.”

And, that fits Bishop to a T, said Murrell, who described her as “one of the smartest players I've coached.”

Although she demurred when it came to talking about her GPA, Bishop is on track to graduate next fall, taking extra time to finish “because I had trouble deciding exactly what I wanted to major in," which turned out to be marketing and advertising.

She is interested in sports marketing, “maybe Nike, but with my sports background, I'd like to work around sports.”

Bishop chose to play for the Vikings “mostly because of the city itself. I love the fact that we're so close to the ocean as well as the mountains. And I love the energy of the city,” she said.

Bishop also liked the idea of PSU because “I'm still close enough to home, but not too close. On my visit, I connected to the players and got along with the team really well so I knew it was going to be a good fit.”

Although unplanned while making her collegiate decision, there's probably another reason Portland State has been a good fit. She and this year's starting quarterback, Conner Kavanaugh, have been dating since they met as freshmen.

Bishop's dad has been her main inspiration and she said that her parents recognized she had big-time potential in basketball early on. “They supported me and encouraged me to see how far I could go," she said.

And Murrell has big plans for her this year.

“She'll be a team captain this year. We've asked her to step up as a leader with Claire (Faucher) leaving. She leads by example. She's able to grow. When she gets into the work place, I think they'll like her ability to grow and learn with the job.”

But, before that happens, there's a year of basketball ahead. And this year's senior-heavy team has high hopes for another year of postseason play.